The American Revolution in the Southern Backcountry

A National Endowment for the Humanities
Landmarks of American History and Culture
Workshop at Converse College
July 19-24 and August 2-7, 2009

Faculty & Staff

Project Director Melissa Walker is George Dean Johnson, Jr. professor of American history at Converse College. She received her Ph.D. in American and women’s history from Clark University. She is an award-winning teacher, having been named 2007 South Carolina Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. She is the recipient of both the Kathryne Amelia Brown Award for outstanding teaching and the O’Herron Award for faculty excellence by Converse College. She directed the first NEH Landmarks “Partisans and Redcoats” Workshop in summer 2007. In the summer of 2004, she was the Master Scholar for the “Teaching American History in South Carolina” project sponsored by the South Carolina Department of Archives and History. In this capacity, she provided content instruction to approximately sixty South Carolina K-12 teachers who participated in one of the U.S. Department of Education’s Teaching American History grant programs. She regularly teaches courses on colonial and revolutionary-era America, and this workshop is modeled on a course she teaches during Converse’s January interim term. Walker’s scholarship has also received accolades. The author or editor of six books and numerous articles, her most recent book, Southern Farmers and Their Stories: Memory and Meaning in Oral History was named a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title in 2007. Her first book All We Knew Was to Farm: Rural Women in the Upcountry South, 1919-1941 received the Willie Lee Rose Prize from the Southern Association for Women Historians in 2001.

Assistant Director Edward C. Woodfin is assistant professor of history at Converse College. Dr. Woodfin earned his Ph.D. in British History from Texas A & M University in 2003. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Baylor University. He was a Fulbright Fellow in Australia in 2000-2001. He taught at Texas A & M and at Blinn College before coming to Converse. While Dr. Woodfin’s research has focused on the experiences of British Empire soldiers in the Sinai and Palestine in World War I, he has a wide background in both British and American military and social history. An outstanding teacher, he has been honored with the Kathryne Amelia Brown Award for excellence in teaching at Converse. He regularly teaches U.S. History survey courses as well as courses on the British Empire that explore the British perspective on the American Revolution. The author of several articles and conference papers, he is currently completing his manuscript tentatively entitled,“All Flies and Dust and Tears”: British Empire Soldiers and the Great War in the Sinai and Palestine, 1916-1918.

Master teacher Martha Bohnenberger also served as master teacher for this project in 2007. Bohnenberger is a veteran middle school social studies teacher who teaches at the Charles Townes Center for the Gifted at the Sterling School in Greenville, South Carolina. She received both her undergraduate and M.Ed. degrees from Converse College, and she has done graduate work beyond the master’s degree. Boehenberger has participated in numerous professional development workshops including Teaching American History in South Carolina, a professional development program in China sponsored by the National Teaching of Asia Network, and the Nuremberg War Crimes Conference at the Truman Presidential Library. A superb teacher who incorporates active learning strategies into her curriculum, Bohnenberger was Teacher of the Year at D. R. Hill Middle School in 2004-2005. She was a member of the South Carolina state panel for revising Social Studies Teaching Standards in 2003, and she is a regular presenter on teaching methods at the conferences of the South Carolina Council on Social Studies. She has been a state level judge for National History Day competitions.

Visiting Scholars:

Lawrence E. Babits, George Washington Distinguished Professor of History at East Carolina Univesity and the foremost expert on the Battle of Cowpens, will lead participants on a battlefield walk at Cowpens. Dr. Babits received his Ph.D. in anthropology at Brown University. A specialist in military history and battlefield archaeology, he is the author of numerous books including A Devil of a Whipping: The Battle of Cowpens (1998). With Joshua Howard, he has just completed a manuscript on the events between the Battle of Cowpens and the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. He has consulted on many documentary films including an episode of the History Channel’s “History Detectives” series on the Battle of Cowpens. He and his son, both avid Revolutionary War re-enactors, were extras in the film, “The Patriot.”

Marvin Cann, professor emeritus of history at Lander University, will offer participants a guided tour of the Ninety-Six Battlefield. Cann is the foremost expert on the military activities at Ninety-Six, and he has authored numerous books and articles about the site including Old Ninety Six in the South Carolina Backcountry 1700-1781(1996). He also served as a consultant for the National Park Service on interpretation at the site. Cann earned his Ph.D. in American history at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

George Fields is the Military Heritage Program Director at Palmetto Conservation Foundation. He has been studying the American Revolution in the Southern backcountry for more than thirty years, and he has been instrumental in preserving a number of battle sites in upstate South Carolina. A retired Army Chaplain, Fields earned his B.A. degree from Wofford College and his M.Div. from Emory University. He was a religion professor, and he served as president of Spartanburg Methodist College for 21 years before retiring to pursue his interest in Revolutionary War history. He is the recipient of the South Carolina Governor’s Award for Historic Preservation and a special award from the Archaeological Society of South Carolina.

Marty D. Matthews is the director of research for the office of North Carolina Historic Sites. He also teaches American history at North Carolina State University. An expert on South Carolina in the Revolutionary era, Dr. Matthews is the author of Forgotten Founder: The Life and Times of Charles Pinckney published by University of South Carolina Press. He earned his Ph.D. in U.S. History at the University of South Carolina. Matthews regularly works with teachers, and in 2004-2005, he was the master scholar for the South Carolina Department of Archives and History’s Teaching American History grant program.

Timothy Potts Timothy D. Potts is a veteran middle school social studies teacher. He teaches sixth and seventh grade social studies at Robert J. Kaiser Middle School in Monticello, New York. He was named outstanding middle school social studies teacher in New York in 2005 by the New York State Council for the Social Studies. He earned his B.A. degree at the State University of New York at Cortland, and his M.Ed. at SUNY-New Paltz. Potts is active in curriculum development, having received a state grant to write an American Revolution curriculum for Fort Ticonderoga. He regularly presents professional development workshops for other teachers, especially on the history of the American Revolution, and he is currently serving as a master teacher for the “Frontiers” Teaching American History grant. Potts has attended three NEH Landmarks conferences, two Gilder-Lehrman seminars, and numerous other intensive content workshops on early American history. He is also a re-enactor with the Fourth Continental Light Dragoons, an American Revolution cavalry re-enactment group. Potts attended the 2007 NEH “Partisans and Redcoats” workshop where he presented a terrific session for his fellow teachers on using re-enactment and re-enactors as a tool for teaching about the Revolution. We have asked him to formalize the workshop and do it for both sessions this year.

Martha R. Severens is curator of the Greenville County Museum of Art. She will lead the workshop session on Using Art to Teach about the American Revolution. Author of Greenville County Museum of Art: The Southern Collection, a survey that places Southern artists in the context of trends in American art, Severens is one of the nation’s foremost experts on Southern art. She regularly participates in Teaching American History workshops and other programs designed to help teachers find ways to incorporate art into their classroom activities.